Lgbtq Rights Movement

The fight for LGBTQ rights has been approached in various ways throughout history. Many times the LGBTQ community has been split between gay assimilationists versus gay separatists. These splits lead to smaller communities within the LGBTQ community to split. Gay assimilationists and gay separatists often disagreed on how to gain rights for the community. The two groups had extremely different ways of fighting for their rights. Within the gay separatists were smaller groups fighting for other rights as well.

During the 1950s, lesbians and gays were a minority; therefore they were invisible and excluded. The homophile movement was created to challenge the idea that homosexuality was a sickness as well as make advances in gaining acceptance,

This group was more confrontational and radical than the Mattachine Society or Daughters of Bilitis. They were not just for white, middle-class gay rights, but wanted justice for everyone. Lesbian feminism stemmed from the Gay Liberation Front and lesbians wanting to be involved in feminism. The National Organization of Women (NOW) did not include lesbians and “in 1969, activist and author Rita Mae Brown and two of her colleagues resigned from NOW because one leader, Betty Friedan, warned of a “lavender menace” of lesbians” (Alexander, Gibson, and Meem 74). Lesbian separatists protested Friedan’s “lavender menace”, eventually reclaiming the term and using it to promote their rights. Lesbian feminist separatists worked against misogynistic attitudes and practices in the gay liberation movement, and anti-lesbian discrimination in the women’s liberation movement. “Emerging lesbian feminist collectives, such as The Furies and Radicalesbians. Argued specifically for a separate ‘Lesbian Nation’ (Johnson)” (Alexander, Gibson, and Meem 74). The group Radicalesbians created a manifesto called “The Woman-Identified Woman” to challenge all feminists to reconsider their conception of lesbians and lesbianism. “Lesbian feminism highlighted many lesbians’ feeling that an enormous political and social divide existed between their worlds and goals for liberation movements and those of their male counterparts” (Alexander, Gibson, and Meem 74). There was a strong divide between “the bar” and the more political LGBT work being done outside the bar. LGBT activists critiqued those who they believed “wasted time” in the bar scene as being unconcerned about larger political issues. On the other hand, “it was not uncommon for disco queens and bar dykes to see the earnest activists as outsiders and downers” (Alexander, Gibson, and Meem